1. Field of the Invention
The invention herein relates to equipment used for fluid (i.e., gas, liquid or mixed gas and liquid) purification. More specifically it relates to methods for identifying such equipment which is optimal for use in an particular fluid purification system.
2. Description of the Prior Art
There are many processes in industry which involve fluid purification. These include processes in which reactant materials are deposited from fluid streams and processes in which fluids are used to remove impurities from surfaces of materials. The degree of purity which is necessary for a particular fluid stream will depend upon the use to which the fluid stream is to be put, but in many cases it is necessary to purify the fluid to a level at which the contaminant concentration in the fluid is at the parts per million (ppm) or parts per billion (ppb) level.
There are numerous types of fluid purification equipment available in the marketplace. However, notwithstanding the different types of equipment available, operators of fluid purification processes often find that the selection of available commercial “off the shelf” devices does not provide a device which is particularly suitable for the unique nature of an operator's particular process. Consequently in the past operators of fluid purification processes have often been faced with the choice of using a market-priced, commercial piece of equipment which may be acceptable but is not ideal for the process or of having to have an expensive custom piece of equipment designed specifically for the process.
Those prior art pieces of equipment were originally available for selection through catalogs. The process operator examined catalogs from several vendors and selected the piece of commercial equipment that came closest to what would be useful in the his or her process. The vendor's sales personnel might be available to assist with the operator's selection, but the end result was still selection of a standard piece of equipment, with little or no accommodation to the operator's particular process. With the advent of the Internet, vendors have in effect been able to put their catalogs online, so that operator using the Internet can select an available piece of fluid purification equipment at the price that the operator is willing to pay. The Internet has also allowed vendors to replace the indexing system of typical catalog with a data input system which allows the operator to enter representative parameters of his or her process and then the vendor's software identifies the closest commercial product available from that vendor. Such systems, however, whether in printed catalogs or on the Internet are still at the level of end products. The operator must therefore determine which properties of the end product he or she is willing to compromise on to obtain other components which are closer to optimal for the process of interest. An operator who is faced with only a limited number of available commercial products may have no choice but to accept equipment with, for instance, poor corrosion resistance in order to obtain, for instance, the desired range of fluid flow rates through the equipment. This is a result of the lack of prior art methods and software which would allow an operator specify or obtain a device which would be optimum for the particular fluid purification process in question on a component-by-component basis.
Another current problem for operators is that effectively they can only access information and order equipment during the regular working day, since they must normally interact directly with vendors' personnel to obtain quotes, discuss product selection, etc. Even where the operator has a vendor's catalogue, they can do little more than get a preliminary idea of what they might need from the catalogue, and must still work directly with the vendor's personnel to develop the full equipment and cost package. This is a particular problem if a vendor is located in a different time zone from the operator. Of course this also means that vendors must maintain substantial staffs of personnel to work with the operators to develop such packages, since the catalogues alone do not enable operators to determine for themselves what equipment is appropriate for their systems, and the catalogues certainly do not allow an operator to custom design a system specifically to meet his or her needs.
It would therefore the advantageous if a method were available through which a fluid purification process operator could specify in detail the applicable parameters of his or her process and which would then result in specification of components which when assembled would be specifically adapted to be used in the operator's process in an optimal manner. It would also be advantageous for that system to be fully available to an operator at all times.